Badger Girl has traveled far and wide. After years of being an angst ridden graduate student, she has returned home and set her sites on more domestic matters. This blog details her culinary adventures, stumbling blocks and questions. Some day she will be able to follow a recipe, create new dishes and maybe actually get her timing down, but until then, join her as she strives to become a Master Chef.

Sunday, March 6, 2011

Mardi Gras Treats

Today I was working an an article for the Examiner about Mardi Gras traditions and I found myself in the kitchen most of the day. I will let the pictures do most of the talking....

This next step was an interesting one. You had to melt butter in a pan, pour the melted butter into a bowl and take two tablespoons of that to mix into the batter.

If you have never made crepes before, you may need a few attempts at making these pancakes. Or if you are like me, if you HAVE made crepes before, you will still need practice. It took awhile to find how much batter should be in the pan. Once the pan got hot and I figured out home much batter (4-5 tablespoons), they were really easy to make and went really fast.

Squeeze some lemon juice on the pancakes and then sprinkle on sugar.

You can either roll up the pancakes or fold in triangles. Enjoy!

For the King's cake, I think it was the first time that I have separated eggs and then just used the yolks.

King's cake dough.

Can you tell that in the next picture it got bigger? This always tries my patience and astounds me, both at the same time.

So I decided to make this more difficult and make my own candied citron. First, you use a vegetable peeler to get the skin off the citrus fruits of your choosing (I did oranges, limes and lemons). Then you scrape the pith out (pic below). This part sucks. A lot.

Make a simple syrup of 2 tablespoons of water and 4 tablespoons (or 1/4 cup) of sugar. Let it boil and add the peels. Cover and simmer for 3 minutes.

Drain off excess moisture and lay out to dry. Confession: I couldn't wait for them to dry.

Add candied citron into dough and knead until well-blended. Form into log. The walnut is my baby for those of you who know about King's cakes.

I could not bear to put the glaze on the cake. It was so amazing without it. I also couldn't find any purple sugar so it would have been a Packers King's Cake.